


deepest and darkest of seas

by decinq



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Post-Captain America: The First Avenger, Steve and Bucky both survive the war, and go home, and they try their very best, some language experiment here--just a bit--for my own indulgence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-02-07
Packaged: 2018-03-10 22:03:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3304976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decinq/pseuds/decinq
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Can you name a single hero who was happy?</p>
            </blockquote>





	deepest and darkest of seas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [circulation](https://archiveofourown.org/users/circulation/gifts), [oscillateswildly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oscillateswildly/gifts).



> blame [alex](http://felixandria.tumblr.com) and [becca](http://commander-rogers.tumblr.com) for all of this. honestly. what the fuck. 
> 
> i hope this isn't shit but i highly suspect that this is shit.
> 
> title taken from "old media" by horse feathers.
> 
> all faults are mine own.

Bucky goes out the side of the train, and Steve thinks: This Is It.

 

Whatever It is. The insurmountable it. The End. There It goes.

 

It isn’t. It, that is. It’s not It. Not the End.

  


 

 

 

Steve reaches Bucky’s fingers. Just barely. Just enough.

 

Bucky squeezes tight, says, “Steve,” and with all the wind, all the chaos, it shouldn’t be so soft.

 

But it is. Soft.

 

Steve’s grip gets tighter. Steve gets ahold of Bucky’s wrist. Steve has super strength, is chemically engineered to be strong. Steve has never tried harder in his entire life, has never pulled harder, never held tighter.

 

Steve pulls Bucky up into the train car.

 

Steve vomits.

 

“Fuck,” Bucky says, still holding onto Steve’s sleeve.

 

“Fuck,” Steve says.

  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

The Soviets and the Allied troops race into Berlin.

 

The war, against all odds, eventually ends.

  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes, when things are happening to you, you don’t even notice until it’s over.

  
  
  


 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve has had heads explode because of Bucky’s bullets right in front of his face; he’s had his nose broken in alleys; he’s seen any number of terrible things in this war, in the unlit streets of Brooklyn.

 

He’s never seen anything worse than the imagined picture of Bucky falling to his death, permanently stuck behind his eyelids.

 

They get Zola. They stop Red Skull before he can even board his plane.

 

Steve doesn’t sleep for eleven days.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

What happens is this: Steve pulls Bucky into the train car, and vomits. And Bucky shakes and shakes until he doesn’t. Steve’s hands have crescents cut into his palms from his fingernails. Bucky doesn’t let go of Steve’s sleeve for hours. Steve’s palms bleed, but heal over immediately.

 

He doesn’t have a single scar on him.

 

Not anything visible, anyway.

  
  


 

 

 

 

The first time that Steve is able to fall asleep since the train, they’re on a plane home.

 

He sits in an uncomfortable seat beside Bucky for six hours, and his eyes eventually fall closed.

 

Just when he starts to dream, Bucky wakes him with a finger on Steve’s cheek. “Thanks,” Steve says.

 

“Wish I could have let you sleep,” Bucky says. Then: “Your breathing was getting shallow. We’ll be landing soon, anyway. Twenty minutes.” Steve lifts his head from Bucky’s shoulder, where is honestly doesn’t really fit anymore, and cracks his neck.

 

“You gonna go talk to your girl?” Bucky nods in Peggy’s direction.

 

“I can’t--I don’t--” Steve sighs, closes his eyes. “I don’t know how, anymore.”

  
  


 

 

They land in Virginia, go to Washington. They are given accolades. It’s tiresome. Steve’s grateful, he’s proud. He’s tired.

 

No one at home understands.

 

The war lives inside them, now.

  


 

 

 

 

They get into Brooklyn on Thursday evening. Winnie Barnes meets them and cries and holds her son for long moments. Bucky cries too, but it’s quiet. Steve feels terrible for being there at all.

 

When Bucky finally pulls away, he says, “Ma. Hi,” and he smiles wider than Steve can remember seeing in years. God. It had really been years.

 

It hits Steve like a brick. They’d been kids. They were just boys when they were thrown into a war Steve still didn’t understand. News was coming out of Europe like nothing Steve had ever heard before. It was like a nightmare. Hell.

 

Suddenly Becka is there, and screaming,”Bucky!”

 

“You’re so tall, little bug,” he says. “I’m sorry I’ve been so long.”

 

“You’re home?” She asks.

 

“War’s over,” he says, and it almost sounds true.

 

 

 

 

 

They stay in Bucky’s parents’ place for a night. They don’t really have anywhere to go. They’ve got a lot of money now, though.

 

Honestly more than Steve can actually comprehend.

 

“We should buy your parents a real house,” Steve says from the floor in front of the couch.

 

“Buy ourselves one, while we’re at it,” Bucky whispers.

  
  
  
  
  


 

 

Bucky crawls in behind Steve’s body at sometime around three.

 

Steve huffs, but he scoots to make room for Bucky behind him. “Buck,” he says.

 

“Too soft,” Bucky says. He wraps his arm around Steve’s middle, and Steve’s breath catches in his throat.

 

He doesn’t say anything, and neither does Bucky. Eventually, Steve can feel Bucky relax a bit, but he still has a tight grip on the front of Steve’s sleep shirt. Steve looks out at the dark. He closes his eyes. Bucky moves closer to him.

 

Bucky says, some time later, “I know it makes no sense, but I’ve never felt more scared.”

 

Steve doesn’t tell him that it does make sense. He doesn’t know how. He puts his hand over Bucky’s on his stomach, laces their fingers together.

 

They aren’t boys anymore. There’s no excuses. Steve doesn’t sigh, although he wants to. He just pushes back into Bucky, wedges them together as much as he can. He never cared about being decent, anyway.

 

But it does make sense, Steve thinks.

 

Maybe everyone fights their own war.

  


 

 

 

 

 

 

The next morning, Bucky is sitting on the fire escape when Steve wakes. It’s early still, the sky is still pink. He’s smoking and drinking a mug of coffee.

 

Steve, for the first time in a long time, itches for a pencil, for paper.

 

He always did like to draw Bucky.

  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

When Bucky turned sixteen, Steve had given him a sketchbook full of drawings. Bucky was always hounding him to let him peek, but Steve always said no. And so, when Steve handed it to Bucky, he said, “Is this really for me? Better not be blank, you punk. I can’t draw for shit.”

 

“Shut up, jerk,” Steve had laughed. “You can look, but only after I’m gone, okay?”

 

“Why--” Bucky said, flipping open the cover. Steve had snapped it closed, quick as lightning.

 

“Promise,” Steve had said.

 

Bucky had rolled his eyes, but he said, “Yeah, okay. I promise.”

  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

 

When Steve sits beside Bucky, he taps his cigarette over the edge and says, “You can never tell them.”

 

Steve doesn’t respond.

 

The sky clears, the sun reaches a higher point in the sky. Birds start chirping.

 

Steve doesn’t remember hearing birds in Europe.

 

The sky is blue and soft. It’s windy. It’s going to be a nice day.

 

“Please,” Bucky says, and Steve turns to see that Bucky is crying again.

 

He doesn’t remember Bucky crying since they were kids. There are some things that just don’t fit inside people, Steve thinks. There are some people who can never make space inside themselves for all that darkness.

 

“Promise,” Bucky says.

 

“I promise,” Steve says. He drinks from Bucky’s mug of coffee.

  
  


 

 

 

They buy a two story house in the Village.

 

“My mother’s going to kill me,” Bucky says. “What’re we gonna do with all this space?”

 

“We could rent out the bottom suite. Sure there’s someone who needs it.”

 

“Okay,” Bucky says. “Where the fuck are we going to get enough furniture to fill it, though?”

  
  
  


 

 

 

Here’s the thing: when you’re poor, you don’t really know how to spend money. Not the kind of money they have, now. And they have a lot of it. Steve was in what feels like a hundred movies. They’ll be comfortable for their whole lives, if they play it right.

 

Here’s another thing: when you never planned to live past twenty-five, you don’t spend much time planning.

 

Steve never, not once, thought about what he’d do after.

 

He never thought there’d be an after.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

They buy a bookcase and a desk. They paint the walls.

 

Steve hates wallpaper, and refuses to put up any despite Becka’s opinion.

 

Howard sends them new-to-market appliances, and Steve doesn’t know how he knew.

 

“That jerk knows everything,” Bucky says, and Steve laughs.

 

“Guess you’re not wrong.”

 

“‘Course I’m not.”

  
  
  
  
  


 

Peggy phones. “I’m sorry to bother you,” she says.

 

Steve can feel himself smiling, “You’re not bothering me.”

 

She sighs. “There are some people at the SSR who want to ask you to come in. They want you to work for them.”

 

“And you’re calling as a courtesy.”

 

“Yes,” she says. And as she says, “Listen, Steve--” he says, “Peggy, I--”

 

She doesn’t chuckle, but when she sighs, it sounds fond.

 

“You go ahead,” she says.

 

“I just--I’m sorry. I don’t know wh--”

 

“It’s okay. Steve. I’m okay.”

 

“I am, though. Sorry.”

 

“You have to stop running,” she says. “Steve, it’ll catch you eventually. Whatever it is.”

  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

Steve has absolutely no contractual obligation to continue being Captain America.

 

There will be another war. Another fight. Washington is already starting to pick arguments with the Soviets.

 

They may need him later. But not now.

  
  


 

 

 

 

“What did you want to be, when you were a kid?” Bucky asks.

 

“I never thought I’d have a chance, you know?”

 

“What about when you were really little, before you had that god damn chip on your shoulder?”

 

“I don’t know,” Steve says. “Happy, I guess.”

  
  
  
  


 

 

 

The first night they sleep in their house, they’ve just laid blankets out on the hard oak floors.

 

“We can’t keep sleepin’ on the floor,” Bucky says. He presses his toes in between Steve’s calves, and Steve yelps. Bucky laughs, “Sorry, sorry, you’re a furnace, do you know that? I swear you feel like you’re running a fever.”

 

“Your toes are icicles, Buck, Jesus.”

 

“Hands, too,” Bucky says before shoving his freezing hands up the back of Steve’s shirt.

 

Steve rolls over to try to dislodge Bucky, but he just rolls with him.

 

They’re laughing like they’re kids. Steve is pushing at Bucky. Steve is stronger than he used to be, but so is Bucky. They’ve both noticed, Steve knows. It’s okay that they haven’t talked about it. He knows that if Bucky wants to say, knows how to say, he will.

 

He’s allowed to keep some things inside himself, just like Steve.

  
  


 

 

 

 

Bucky pulls his hands out from the back of Steve’s shirt, pushes Steve’s arms down to his side.

 

“I still got it,” he says. “You might be bigger than me, but I still got you.”

 

“Sure Buck,” Steve says, and then he relaxes just enough to catch Bucky off guard when he flips them again, holds Bucky’s face in place with his palms.

 

Bucky keeps laughing, hasn’t stopped laughing. It’s the best thing that Steve has heard since before they shipped out. Since before Pearl Harbour.

 

It’s been so long.

 

A lifetime, really.

 

Bucky is laughing until he isn’t: the air changes around them quickly. The blink of an eye, Steve thinks, and everything changes.

 

That’s how life happens, he guesses.

 

One day you’re one thing, and then suddenly you wake up and a whole war has passed. It seemed so slow at the time. Like nothing at all.

 

“Steve,” Bucky says, and it feels like he’s saying everything. His left hand moves to Steve’s side.

 

Steve stares down at Bucky, and then closes his eyes. He runs his nose along Bucky’s, breathes deep.

 

Bucky leans up slowly, and brushes his lips across Steve’s so lightly, he’s almost not sure it happened. Except--

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Except Bucky does it again, still tentative, and Steve thinks: This Is It.

 

The real and ultimate It.

  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

It happens like this:

 

Steve crushes his lips to Bucky’s and Bucky groans. He mumbles, “God,” into Steve’s mouth, and Steve licks his tongue into Bucky’s mouth.

 

Bucky flips them over, pushes down into Steve like it will kill him if he doesn’t. Steve thinks maybe he’ll die if he can’t feel all of Bucky. He gets his hands in the back of Bucky’s shir, pulls his nails down Bucky’s shoulder, bites at Bucky’s upper lip. Bucky’s hands cup Steve’s face, and it makes Steve want to cry.

 

Steve pulls Bucky against him harder, wraps his legs around Bucky’s middle. His hands run down Bucky’s back to Bucky’s waistband, and he stops.

 

“Steve?” Bucky asks. His heavy breaths are warm on Steve’s cheek. It matters so much to Steve that he can feel it, that he can have it. “You okay?” Bucky says, and Steve can hear the panic and so he nods. It matters.

 

“Bucky,” Steve says, and he smiles. “I fucking love you. I love you. It matters. I l--”

 

Bucky’s mouth is on Steve’s mouth before Steve can finish his thought.  Bucky’s hands are fast to pull Steve’s sleep pants down his hips. Steve gets his own hands to work, and he tugs at Bucky’s waistband ineffectively.

 

Bucky groans and rolls off of Steve to pull off his own pants, and pulls his shirt over his head. Because Steve can take a hint, he follows Bucky's example. When Bucky settles on top of him, Steve's breath stutters for the first time since he was given the serum. "Oh," he says, when Bucky pushes their hips together.

Bucky kisses along Steve's jaw as his hand wraps around Steve's erection. Steve arches his back towards Bucky at the contact, and Bucky just kisses him harder.

 

It feels heavier than any weight Steve has ever had to carry.

 

Steve licks his palm and reaches down for Bucky's cock; when his fingers wrap around him, Bucky says, "God," into Steve's mouth, and licks into Steve's mouth with more hunger than before. "Steve."

 

Steve comes all over Bucky's hand, his orgasm catching him by surprise. He breathes heavily into the joint of Bucky's neck and shoulder, and keeps his wrist moving. It's only a moment after when Bucky comes, too.

 

Steve wipes his hand on his shirt and takes a deep breath. As Bucky's own breathing slows, Steve carts his fingers through Bucky's hair. 

 

"Hey," Bucky says, when he leans up and looks at Steve's face. 

 

"Hey," Steve says, and smiles.

 

"You're a full body blusher, Steve Rogers," Bucky says.

 

"Bucky," Steve whines, and Bucky kisses him quiet.

 

"I love you, too, you know," Bucky says. 

 

"I know," Steve says. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It doesn't feel so heavy, Steve learns. The weight of It all, it's easier with Bucky there to carry part of the load.

 

It makes it easier, being happy without any of the guilt. 

 

 

 

 

 

The day that they finish putting their bed together, Bucky blows Steve against the icebox. When he gets up from his spot on the kitchen tile he says, "I think I want to get a dog."

 

 

 

 

Living in a house with one bed and lots of books and Steve's mom's old record player, It's easy.

 

  
  
  
  
  
  
And, hell, Steve thinks. They damn well deserve It.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> // find me on [tumblr](http://bittyjack.tumblr.com).


End file.
